The Song of the Religious Outcast
Finding Wholeness and Healing In Seasons of Loneliness
Have you experienced seasons of loneliness or isolation while living your truth? For most of us here, we experienced the loss of our closest friends and even family members during the courageous deconstruction of our damaging religious beliefs and worldview. But the losses certainly don’t stop there.
Seasons of solitude that emerge for being true to your inner compass are not usually short-lived. They can lead to long stretches of time where you can’t possibly fit into normal society, because you are no longer interested in doing so. At these times, you may not feel mentally or spiritually aligned with most of the people around you, including spouses, parents, and/or children. It’s a confusing, paradoxical time, experiencing the bliss of newfound mental and spiritual freedom, along with a joyful sense of the fuller love of God, while at the same time processing the shock and grief that some of the most important relationships in your life were much more fragile, shallow, or conditional than you ever thought possible.
I remember many aspects of my newfound life path on the way to freedom and spiritual awakening guaranteeing that I would not find common ground with nearly anyone…except those on the very similar path.
For starters, I saw the world so differently once I became conscious of the toxic, irrational, fear-based beliefs I held previously that made me judge and categorize nearly everyone I met. Suddenly, I saw all humans as breathtakingly and eternally valued—humans I normally would have shied away from because they were dangerous to my worldview or because they were not the type to be interested in saying the sinner’s prayer. Why waste my time, I used to semi-consciously prejudge? That person with tattoos and a skimpy bikini drinking a beer clearly is not interested in putting their faith in Jesus. I mean, everyone and their mother already knows about Jesus, and if they’re not already saved, then they aren’t interested, right?
Not that I shared my faith with anyone—ever—which I have written about in other places. It’s because I was that salesman who did not believe in my own products. Christianity was the only true, empowered path, they said. All other paths lack God’s power or approval and solidly lead to destruction. Yet even though I was completely devoted to the beliefs and practices, Christian philosophy and promises weren’t working in my life. Why would I be so hypocritical and reckless to share it with others until I had it figured out? That would be like selling a car to someone without an engine.
I did lose all my church friends, several family members, and all my budding freelance writing career opportunities. At this point, I had built up a significant platform in the Christian publishing kingdom, writing articles and blogs for major websites, magazines, and even landing lucrative contract jobs for Thomas Nelson Publishers. I also lost all of my previous work and my professional reputation. At the time of my deconstruction, I had just completed an inspirational parenting book that featured endorsements from high profile Christian leaders. Though the book took me more than a year to complete and was a complete labor of love, practically overnight the message became irrelevant to me. I also knew that I could not use the endorsements I had worked so hard for, and so I abandoned the whole project.
Isolation, for me, was not just a phenomenon with my religious connections and history. Because I tend to live from my heart or inner guidance system, people often raise eyebrows at my life decisions or chosen paths, wondering to themselves if I’m bat-shit crazy. Admittedly, to the untrained eye, I do unconventional, confounding things. I am sometimes compelled to do things that seem out of touch with reality to those on the outside looking in.
Like the time I returned from a trip to Haiti and suggested to my husband that we sell our newly built 4,000 sq. ft. house on two acres and give away most of the capital gains for the benefit of orphans (apparently he’s also bat-shit crazy because he agreed!). …Or the time we suddenly moved to Puerto Rico because we happened upon a property that was better than winning the lottery (I am certain it was a “Universe repayment” for giving away the home for orphans and involved a huge synchronicity to that effect). …Or when I suddenly pursued a bachelor’s degree in nursing at age forty-five, becoming an ER nurse, which in total required at least ten years of intense dedication to education and experience, along with lonely solitude on such a difficult path. Or like the time I accidentally fell into life-altering love with a woman from Alaska, twenty years into my traditional marriage. Those sorts of things.
I noticed after religious deconstruction and losing my entire Christian subculture and its people, I did not fit in with any other group or subculture (or the predominant culture) because I did not speak their language or understand their customs. I had been so insulated my whole life in the Evangelical Christian Bubble that, that even if I tried to mimic their language and customs, I stood out like an uncomfortable foreigner. For someone who grew up as a “sanctified Christian” for four decades of my life, who did not mix with the other 70% of the worldviews around me (because I was taught to keep myself untainted by the world), I didn’t have any idea of how to conduct myself around these foreign creatures. Trying to be relatable always felt awkward in my new skin, because I was painfully aware that they were aware that I did not fit in. They were just being polite with the awkward lady.
Fortunately (I guess?), I experienced a childhood that prepared me for this life of social misfittedness. I noticed early on that I didn’t fit into my family, nor did I ever fit into peer groups throughout my 0-18 childhood. I was often ignored, left out, teased, or bullied by peers (and even by a few teachers) in school, but as a young child, I did not have enough awareness to understand why.
Eventually, I came to suspect it was because I didn’t ever try to fit in. Someone in high school once told me that I came across as a confident maverick-type who was non-compliant with groupthink. I was intimidating to the status quo, they said, which meant that they saw me as a threat. The funny thing is, I don’t think I ever did this overtly or consciously because on the inside, I always felt a bit timid. It was more of an energy I emanated to which I was completely oblivious. I still get similar feedback to this day, and I am still unaware of how this energy accompanies me.
Last year brought about huge self-understanding when I discovered my astrology birth chart, which is proposed to be a blueprint of one’s incarnation personality, life lessons, and purpose. According to my chart, I came here to be an individual, a rebel, and an outsider who would need to develop my courage and confidence for criticizing false systems and beliefs; to be a rule-breaker of societal molds or blind compliance; and to be a leader who lives from my heart and does not comply with outdated or intuitively false paradigms (✅✅✅✅).
You can’t make this stuff up. It’s all there in my birth chart. This is why astrology can be so healing in understanding the twists and turns of our lives through the lenses of what we came here to do and experience.
As an aside: You can book a very affordable chart reading with me if you want to learn more about why you came here—your purpose, life lessons, and how to find your greatest happiness. Just ask.
So what do we make of this path of isolation—whether for a season or a lifetime? How do we frame it so that it does not feel like we have been abandoned by the Universe, or hung out to dry? What are the important and even beneficial lessons we can glean from this lonely season of life?
Today I was listening to Carl Jung’s perspective on seasons of isolation, which brought about this blog topic. I hope you will find some encouragement and hope in these perspectives, as I did.
Isolation is not rejection, but rather preparation for being able to contain a greater version of yourself.😍 These periods are not accidental; they are invitations into a new phase of your soul’s evolution. It’s not about being alone. It’s about being remade.
Think about how a caterpillar is invited into the alchemical transformation of the cocoon. If the caterpillar does not accept the invitation to this most profound period of complete darkness, uncertainty, and solitude, if it does not have the courage to face this initiation by utter death to its old self, it will remain—and die—a caterpillar.
In short, no guts, no glory. No pain, no story.
Alone times can be seen not as suffering, but as sacred ground. Most of us in the modern world spend a great deal of time and energy avoiding quiet or solitude. We are not comfortable with the falling away of all distractions, noise, and material world drama, because then we come face to face with ourselves. Reminds me of that saying, “wherever you go, there you are.” At such a time, we are likely to encounter the discomfort of facing our greatest fears, our worst flaws, and our deepest insufficiencies. But like the caterpillar, facing ourselves—alone, in the dark—is when the real work of transformation begins.
This period of isolation and/or desolation undoubtedly has opportunity to become one of the most important chapters of your life.
Jung taught that a period of isolation is an essential and sacred experience in the evolution of the Self. No self-transformational work can begin in the midst of the chaos and noise of society, but requires that we retreat from the roles we have been conditioned to play. For Jung, Solitude isn’t a void, it’s a vessel (think: cocoon), carved out by necessity.
When life isolates you—when people leave, when momentum dies, when you realize what you thought was real was a lie, when distractions are peeled away—it’s not life punishing you or abandoning you; it’s life preparing you. It’s your soul initiating its own inner journey.
I have as much trouble as anyone being with myself. Alone. Quiet. It’s really hard not to feel abandoned in these times, which is my default story from childhood. Taking deliberate space with myself is work. It can feel painful, scary, and daunting. But it’s one of those life seasons that is forced on you, and you either get the work done, or wallow in it indefinitely. Like other trials, the only way out is through.
Though being in solitude with yourself is uncomfortable at first, it marks the beginning of individuation, or what Jung termed the lifelong process of becoming whole. (Can’t we all benefit from more of that!?) Becoming whole, according to Jung, was not accomplished through acquiring or adding something, such as close relationships or finding someone who “completes” you, but by peeling away what is false, what is inherited, what is no longer needed.
Individuation is a fascinating term. I envision a fetus forming in utero that hasn’t been able to separate from its mother yet, because it is not complete or able to live on its own. But separation of a whole, fully functional human at at an impending rite of passage (birth) is the goal and the promise. At the time of completion, that baby will be ready to emerge into the world as its own being.
How many of us walk the earth as incomplete fragments of beings, holding onto false beliefs about ourselves, wearing masks that were never intended for us, longing to be whole? If only we didn’t have to go into that dark womb of isolation to re-member ourselves!
My inner child alone has her whole closet full of false beliefs from five decades ago that were buried in my unconscious until they were triggered by the aforementioned woman in my life. I have been working through these painful, emotionally charged beliefs during a five-year season of dark night solitude. Beliefs such as: I’m not enough, I’m insignificant, I’m unloved, it’s not safe to risk my heart with loving another, nobody will protect me, etc. Other false beliefs and fears from my adult self, especially during religious deconstruction included: I can’t trust myself not to get lost, the world is not safe, what if I lose my faith altogether?
When you get into the realm of what’s inherited, it can be a long quest to figure out ancestral wounds passed through your DNA, or through your parents’ beliefs and behaviors, or even through your own past lives that you brought here. Some of the “no longer needed” category items are apparent: religion!, relationships that are not fostering growth, divisive mediums (media, politics, critical or negative people in my energy field, etc.)
Remember, solitude is not a punishment; it’s a threshold. When the outer world quiets, the inner world begins to speak. But it doesn’t necessarily speak in loving, comforting, or endearing language. It speaks in fragments, memories, regrets, and difficult feelings you thought were buried. Suppressed grief, unprocessed anger, jealousy, shame…they all begin to surface. This is not to torment you, but to reveal that these hurting places (your “shadow self”) still reside in you and need your attention, love, acceptance, and integration.
For me, it’s hard to tell my shadow self from my inner child. It feels like they are one and the same. My inner child who never healed from the neglect and abuses she experienced as a little one often comes to the surface with disproportionate and even explosive outbursts when something rubs up against those wounds. I am learning how to mother her and soothe her, though. I wish I had known about her needs and how to tend them years ago. We could have saved a lot of drama and pain together.
When the shadow self begins to emerge, similar to my inner child outbursts, is the time when most people panic. They assume the pain they’re feeling is a sign they’ve broken down, when in truth, it’s a good sign that something is breaking open. Think of all that charged emotion like doing surgery on an infected wound or an abscess; the infection needs to be let out so that the wound can begin healing.
It’s so difficult to remember not to harshly judge or keep suppressing our shadowy urges (which is why alone time is crucial). Jung insisted that shadow elements are not enemies; they are messengers, parts of ourselves that we abandoned because they didn’t fit the image we were taught to project.
Think of the tragedy of a child trying to express sadness or anger, but being told to “stop crying and be a big girl!” Shadow elements contain vital energy—truths, talents, and even instincts that were locked away with them. The work is not to destroy the shadow, but to integrate it. To meet your fears with curiosity. To welcome what you once rejected. This is the essence of shadow work for which solitude is its sacred soil.
What is ultimately to gain? The shadow that once nagged at us incessantly has now been integrated into a calm, compassionate space within. “You begin to feel your own presence, not as a reaction to others but as something self-sustaining and comforting. The silence once heavy, now becomes meaningful. The space around you that felt like lack, and fear, and discomfort, now becomes freedom. It’s not about becoming someone new, but about remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.”
As your ego softens, you finally remember what brings you peace, what ignites your curiosity, what you truly value when no one is watching. You no longer need to be understood to feel valid. You don’t need to be visible to feel real. You don’t need a religion to validate your spiritual journey. This kind of inner peace cannot be bought, taught or performed. It must be experienced directly through presence, through silence, through the sacred discomfort of being with yourself. Once you’ve tasted it, even for a moment, you realize how much of your life was lived in frenzied distraction from you own soul.
Eventually the season of solitude gives way to a return, a way of seeing the world through new eyes. The person you bring back is not the one who entered. Like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon, who now sees and tastes the world in vivid, delicious color while dancing through the sky.
As a newly emerged version of yourself, you may lose even more people who cannot make space for your new wings, but you’ve already faced being alone. You no longer abandon yourself for approval. You no longer outsource your value. And in the world where so many live disconnected from themselves, your presence becomes rare. Not because it demands attention, but because it radiates alignment. This is what Jung meant by individuation. A return to the world, not as a persona, but as a whole human being. In that wholeness, you begin not just to live, but to embody your truth. That in itself is healing for you and others.
Solitude, though often feared, is one of the most pure, effective teachers you will ever encounter. It strips away until all that remains is YOU—raw, real, whole, returning you to the heart of your True Self. What could be better than that?!
Great article